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10 Short Medieval Poems Everyone Should Read

Looking for some great short medieval poems which are easy to read? Look no further than this, our latest post…

Medieval poetry can be a daunting field to dip into (to mix our metaphors terribly). Although Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Divine Comedy are masterpieces and essential reading, perhaps the best route into medieval poetry – as with any poetry – is to start small. What follows is our pick of the best short medieval poems written in English.

They are all presented in the original Middle English, because here at Interesting Literature we believe that that’s the best way to read the poems. This does mean that several words/phrases need glossing, so we’ve done this briefly before each poem. All of these poems were written (or at least written down) some time during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: our source for them is the excellent Penguin book of Medieval…